


Vert

by Broken_Clover



Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Dark, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Gen, Mild Blood, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broken_Clover/pseuds/Broken_Clover
Summary: It feels like they're mocking him, whenever he looks at himself in the mirror
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Vert

**Author's Note:**

> For Lulu

Sweaty, trembling fingers fumbled with the plastic twist-cap of a pill bottle. Flies buzzed around the dim overhead light as it fizzled, drowned out by the sound of an irate grumble

“Come on...come on already…”

Limbs locked tight with frustration. A leg lashed out to kick a small pile of debris on the dirty concrete floor, sending rotten cardboard and broken bits of plastic skittering away.

“Fuuuck…” A trembling voice echoed in the small room. Its owner paused from the task of unsuccessfully wrenching the container open to analyze his hand. He made another irritated noise at the sight of the bright red flesh of his palm, and the set of lines that had marked the skin from how hard he had been gripping it.

It seemed child safety measures also worked very well on drunkards. Well, maybe it wasn’t the alcohol. But he couldn’t really remember what he’d had aside from that in the past couple of days. There was the usual soreness of an empty stomach whimpering in the back of his mind, furiously smoothed over and placated with a triple-dose of extra-potent painkillers. But aside from that, he couldn’t discern much of anything.

 _“Fucking! Hell!”_ An arm lashed out, smashing the bright orange plastic against the edge of the sink. The top snapped clean off, sending a splash of pills flying. A few clicked against the floor, and a few others nestled in his greasy, choppy hair, but most of them managed to roll to a stop at the bottom of the sink basin.

Making a little shocked noise, Chipp scrambled onto his hands and knees. His right leg dragged limply behind. The pills had made the stabbing pain go away, but it didn’t make the limb much more inclined to move. The fact that he was injured barely registered in his hazy mind as he scooped up a few scattered pills, staring at them with the same reverence that was usually reserved for holy relics and priceless artifacts.

Chipp had sold just enough pills and syringes to keep himself afloat, just like every week. Just barely enough for cheap food to nibble on, with the majority of it funneled towards the various legal and illegal medications that his body screamed for. Each had a different effect, a different way it pulled his mind around. He didn’t care about how they slowed his thoughts, made him calm, made it harder to hate himself and what he’d become. That was all just a nice bonus.

First and foremost, it was only for one thing.

He hesitated for a moment, taking a dry swallow and licking his cracked lips. Maybe it wasn’t hesitation, just a fuzzy spot in his brain where the various drugs wiped had out his ability to think. He’d spent the last two days almost entirely unconscious thanks to a handful of sleeping pills, and he had only just regained enough awareness to go out and buy himself a fresh supply. The sleeping pills were his second-favorite, behind the ones currently scattered all over the bathroom. For a stupid kid who’d never even managed to finish eighth grade, his mind was constantly abuzz with thoughts, never silent unless forcibly gagged into silence with tranquilisers and antihistamines. And yet no matter how long he knocked himself out for, he never managed to look any more well-rested.

When he twisted the faucet, nothing came out. Had he forgotten to pay the water bill? Did he even have running water normally? His mind felt too hazy to give him a proper answer. 

His mouth still felt dry. He stuck a pair of fingers down his throat, pulling them back out immediately as he felt his gag reflex kick and acid rise in his throat. Throwing up on an empty stomach gave him the worst headaches. He managed to hock up a gob of phlegm and practically threw the pills down his throat. The small bit of wetness didn’t do much to cushion the bitterness, but he stubbornly swallowed. It was a short-lived victory. As soon as the drugs went down, he could feel an unpleasant sting under his tongue, a surefire sign that he was about to puke up whatever he’d just put down.

A trembling hand slapped over his mouth. He wasn’t going to throw up. He wasn’t going to waste the pills that he’d spent hours running around gang zones and nearly getting shot to kingdom come to afford. There was still the rest of the bottle, but they had to last. Shit, were the painkillers wearing off? The nausea wasn’t going away and his leg was burning-

“Khh-” Chipp hissed in pain, slumping against the sink. He let his head rest against the porcelain, cool and relatively clean compared to his dirty, sweaty self. Was the whole room so warm, or was it just him? Was it the weather outside that was doing it? What month was it, again? He’d lost track of time. The only coherent thought in his head was the slowly-growing pain in his leg.

He wouldn’t care once the pills kicked in. He wouldn’t care about anything. He just had to wait until they worked.

With enough resistance, his stomach finally began to settle. A crooked smile snaked across his face. He slumped back, boneless body propped up only by the fingers hooked around the sink still. His head lolled to the side, staring dully at the vanity on the wall.

The mirror was cracked on the left side, where he’d punched it until his knuckles were sliced to ribbons. The shards still reflected what was in front of them, splitting his face into a dozen copies, each and every one sharing the same sickly-sallow skin and dark-ringed eyes.

His smile faded.

Those eyes. Those damn eyes, how they mocked him whenever he looked at his reflection. Bright red and hideous, like fresh blood.

Gear’s eyes.

At least, that’s what everyone said. It was what mothers uttered to their children in hushed tones before ushering them in the other direction, as soon as they spotted him. _‘He’s dangerous,’_ gossipers whispered to each other, still within earshot. _‘If the cops don’t deal with it soon, I’m gonna go torch it myself. Can’t even bother killing one Gear, no wonder the war’s gone on so long.’_

The other kids at the orphanage hadn’t had any reservations with their disgust. They offered no half-assed whispers or subtle movements to cross the street before he could get anywhere near them. They were all war orphans, save for the rare crack kid that CPS actually got off their asses to handle. They were all-too-happy to let him know just what they thought of the things that killed off their parents. The horrible monsters with the red eyes.

Not that it made much sense, did it? He wasn’t a Gear. He couldn’t shoot lasers or sprout wings and fly. Maybe it would have been better if he could. Then he could fly away from everyone and live alone somewhere in the woods. Like the ones in the books the Sisters used to read to them. _He_ couldn’t read, not well. He fumbled around big words. Maybe once upon a time he’d cared about getting better at it, but the gleeful laughter of classmates at his frequent mistakes made it too aggravating to bother.putting in the effort.

All he had were the eyes, but that was enough. That was all people needed to assume he was some kind of monster. It was probably the same reason his parents had fucked off and left him in the trash pile. That was where the matron had said she’d found him, screaming and red-skinned, still stained with his mother’s blood. Still warm from the womb, but the frigid February weather would have done the job quickly anyway. They had assumed that was why he’d been left out there, though snapping his neck or smashing his head in would have been quicker and quieter. Maybe she had been a coward. Maybe it didn’t matter.

The sight of his own face made cool dread pool in the pit of his guts. He sank back to the floor again, huddling in the dirty corner between the wall and the sink. Hands covered his eyes as he rocked back and forth in the little cranny, attempting to soothe the little wisps of anxiety before they congealed and sent him spiraling down into something below the rock bottom he’d already hit. He wondered if it would mean he’d finally have the courage to down his supply in one go and pass out on the ratty old couch for the last time, staring up at the peeling ceiling until he finally drifted off to somewhere he could never come back from.

Heh. Maybe cowardice ran in his blood. 

No. No, he could handle it. He wasn’t going to care about it soon. He just had to be patient.

With time, the cold fear began to warm over. The lopsided smile split his face again. Ah. There it was. Why had he felt so afraid before? Everything was so lovely! So, so lovely...

Enough waiting brought the sensation of vertigo and encroaching euphoria on the horizon, like a gorgeous sunrise slowly arriving to burn his pale skin. It reminded him of the orphanage at Christmas, when the jet-setters and bigshots who lived in the nice houses on the other end of the city loosened up the tight grip on their wallets and offered alms to the run-down shelters and children’s homes, for the sake of their egos and to convince themselves that they were good people, despite never giving a shit any other day of the year. The genuineness didn’t matter to Chipp in the slightest, as long as it meant eating something other than shitty canned food for one day, or maybe even getting a new toy that would inevitably wind up stolen or broken by the older, tougher kids within the same week. It was one of the few things his little-kid brain looked forward to.

An eager shiver rushed down his spine. The grubby colors of the walls began smearing into each other. Artificial tranquility was better than no tranquility, though he struggled to keep a grip on the fleeting edges of awareness as they turned slippery and slid through his fingers. These pills did strange things to him, but they never seemed consistent. They were supposed to be steroids, if he remembered right, but sometimes they made him drowsy, sometimes they made him so angry he stumbled into the street and picked a fight with the first person who looked his way, and sometimes it dragged his brain to a halt until he could do nothing more than stare at the wall. Maybe they cut the pills with something else. Drug dealers tended to drop like flies, and supplies shifted almost daily. Who knew where it came from anymore. 

He was content with whatever they did to him, he never cared. But before all that happened, he needed to make sure he got what he wanted.

It was difficult to sit back up. One of the few perks of his dilapidated apartment was that nobody ever cared what he did. Nobody ever gave a shit about some teenage junkie drugging himself to death, unless he forgot to pay rent or his corpse began decaying and making a massive stench.

That’s how it always was, wasn’t it? Nobody had ever cared about him. No one gave a shit. That’s all he was, some useless drug addict rotting away, just waiting to be found cold with a needle still in his arm. Nobody ever cared nobody ever cared nobody cared nobody cared nobody cared nobody cared nobody nobody nobody nobody no-

Chipp smashed his head against the sink, filling his nose with the scent of blood. A blurry smear of red was staining the edge, ignored as something else caught his attention.

“Ha...ha...hahaha…”

He pawed at the grubby mirror, weakly gripping the edge of the sink for stability. Sickly-green eyes practically shimmered in the low light to stare back at him.

“Not red. Not red anymore.” A side effect that hardly anyone cared about or paid attention to, but meant all the world for him. “I’m not a monster.”

The smile threatened to rip his face in two. His heart felt ready to burst from the sheer amount of joy flooding his system. _This_ was what he looked forward to now. Pretending. Pretending he was someone else, some _thing_ else.

“Pretty...I’m so pretty…”

Tears fell from his eyes as his shoulders shook. To a stranger, it was impossible to tell if he was laughing or crying. And if he were being honest, Chipp didn’t even know which it was.

He collapsed into a pile on the floor, trembling. There was nothing else in the world. No past, no future, no people, nothing outside his tiny little room. Just him, in a single moment of bliss.

Then again, what future did he have, anyway?

“Pretty...pretty...pretty…”


End file.
